Dick Francis's Gamble (15 page)

“And why didn't you work this out before I was arrested?” I was beginning to sound rather self-righteous even to my ears.

“We were simply acting on a request from the Wiltshire force,” he replied, neatly passing the blame elsewhere.

“Well, then they should have checked,” I said, trying to maintain a look of rightful indignation. “Maybe I'll sue you for wrongful arrest.”

“I think, sir,” he said very formally, “that you will find that attempted murder is an arrestable offense, and that we had reasonable grounds for an arrest. Just because it turned out that you couldn't have been the perpetrator doesn't give you grounds for claiming false arrest.”

“Hmm,” I said. “So I am now free to go, just like that?”

“Yes,” he said.

“No questions? No police bail?”

“No, sir,” he replied. “Alibi is a complete defense. It doesn't mitigate a crime, it proves innocence. So there would be no point in charging or bailing you. However, I am sure that the Wiltshire force will want to ask some questions about your argument with Mr. Searle at Cheltenham Races yesterday. No doubt they will be making an appointment in due course. You are free to go home now,” he said. He waved a hand towards the doorway as if trying to encourage me on my way.

I'd had enough of this cell and I didn't need his encouragement to leave it.

The custody sergeant sneered at me as he returned my watch and mobile phone, my tie, belt and shoelaces, and the previous contents of my pockets. He clearly enjoyed booking prisoners in far more than letting them go.

“Sign here,” said the sergeant without any warmth, pointing at a form on the desk.

I signed.

“Thanks for the supper,” I said cheerily.

The sergeant didn't reply.

“Which way out?” I asked, looking around at various doors, none of them with a convenient EXIT sign above it. Perhaps it was designed that way to confuse any escapees.

“That way,” said the sergeant, pointing at one of the doors. He pushed a button on his desk, and the lock on the heavy steel door buzzed. I pulled it open and walked out into the police station reception area as the door closed automatically behind me with a loud clunk.

Claudia was waiting there, sitting on an upright tubular steel chair that was bolted to the floor. She jumped up when she saw me and rushed over, throwing her arms around my neck and hugging me tight. She was crying.

“Oh, Nick,” she sobbed into my neck, “I've been so frightened.”

“Come on,” I said, hugging her back. “Let's go home.”

We walked out into the night, hand in hand, and hailed a passing black cab.

“I didn't think you'd be here,” I said to Claudia as we sat down.

“Why ever not?” she said. “I've been here ever since I found out where they'd taken you. It's been bloody hours.”

“But how did you know I'd been arrested?” The police had allowed me only one call, and I'd made that to the company's lawyer, Andrew Mellor.

“Rosemary called me,” Claudia said. “She was in floods of tears.”

“Rosemary?” I asked.

“You know,” she said. “Rosemary McDowd. She's such a dear.”

I had worked at Lyall & Black for five years and for all that time I'd had no idea that Mrs. McDowd's name was Rosemary. The receptionists were always referred to as Mrs. McDowd and Mrs. Johnson because that's what they called each other. Only the other staff had first names, Mr. Patrick, Mr. Gregory, Miss Jessica, Mr. Nicholas and so on, and we were only addressed in that way because, again, that was how the Mesdames McDowd and Johnson did it.

“How did Mrs. McDowd have your number?” I asked.

“Oh, we speak quite often.”

“What about?”

Claudia didn't reply.

“What about?” I repeated.

“You,” she said.

“What about me?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she said evasively.

“No. Come on,” I said. “Tell me. What about me?”

Claudia sighed. “I sometimes call her to find out what sort of mood you're in when you leave the office.”

More likely, I thought suspiciously, to check that I was actually in the office or when I'd left it.

“So what did Mrs. McDowd tell you today?” I asked, purposely changing the conversation's direction.

“Between sobs, she told me that you had been arrested by the police for attempted murder. I thought it must be to do with Herb Kovak, but she said it was about someone else.”

I nodded. “Billy Searle was attacked this morning. He was a top jump jockey, and also a client of mine.”

“What the hell's going on?” Claudia said.

That's what I wanted to know.

 

 

I
t had been nearly eleven o'clock by the time I'd been released, and I'd asked the taxi driver to go to the newspaper kiosk on the Edgware Road where I knew they received the early editions of the daily newspapers the night before.

Claudia stayed in the cab as I went to buy copies of all they had, including the
Racing Post
, which arrived in a van as I was paying for the rest.

If its previous day's front-page headline had been vague and set as a question, this one pulled none of its punches:

And the article beneath gave no comfort to me either.

Remarkably accurate, I thought, except for the bit about currently being held at the Paddington Green Police Station, and that had been right until about twenty minutes ago. Beside the article was another picture of Billy Searle, this time all smiles and wearing a business suit, and a photograph of the cordoned-off village of Baydon. Overlying the top right-hand corner of this photo was a smaller head-and-shoulders shot of me, positioned, to my eye, as if implying that I had been present in Baydon High Street.

Gregory was going to have a field day in the morning. It wouldn't just be my head he would have on a stick, it would be my career as well. Who would trust a financial adviser who was on the front page of a national newspaper having been arrested for attempted murder?

Not me, for one.

I climbed back into the cab with the papers and showed the
Racing Post
to Claudia.

“It so bloody unfair,” she said, reading the headline. “How can they mention your name when you haven't even been charged? You should sue.”

“Over what?” I asked. “They haven't said anything that wasn't true.”

“But why do the police give out names before they charge someone?”

I suspected that the information had not come from the police but from a source much closer to home. The time and place of the arrest were too precise and too accurate. The police would have only said something like “A twenty-nine-year-old man has been arrested and is helping with our inquiries.”

My money would be on Rory to be the office mole, although what he hoped to gain by it was anyone's idea. He couldn't have my job without passing his IFA exams first, and even I didn't believe he would have murdered Herb for the cubicle close to the window. It would have been Diana's anyway.

 

 

I
looked at the newspapers before I went to bed and all of them had front- or back-page reports about the attack on Billy Searle. None of them had the full facts, but each still managed to mention me by name and imply my guilt.

Oh God, I thought, my mother would see them in the morning.

I switched on the television and watched the latest news on one of the twenty-four-hour news channels. They had a report live from Baydon.

“It appears,” said the reporter, “that the jockey Billy Searle was leaving his home to ride his bicycle to Lambourn, as he did every morning. He was due to ride horses at morning exercise. He was being waved away by his girlfriend when a car, which had seemingly been waiting in the street, suddenly accelerated into the bicycle, knocking Searle violently to the ground, before being driven away at speed. Billy Searle was taken to the hospital in Swindon, where he is in a critical but stable condition with head and leg injuries. Police are asking anyone who may have any information concerning the incident to come forward. A man who we believe to be the ex-jockey Nicholas Foxton was arrested in connection with the attack, but he has since been released without charge.”

“Well, at least they said you'd been released,” said Claudia.

“I'd rather they hadn't mentioned my name at all,” I said. “You watch. Most people will think I'm guilty. They will already all have me tried and convicted in their minds. Being released will make no difference, not until after the police have caught the real attacker and he's confessed.”

“It's so unfair,” Claudia said again.

Indeed it was, but complaining about it wasn't going to help. I just hoped that they arrested the real attacker soon.

Claudia and I went upstairs to bed, but I couldn't sleep. I lay awake in the darkness, going over and over everything in my head.

Last Saturday morning my life had been so settled and predictable and my career path mapped out to success and riches, even if it was a little boring. But the last five days had seen so much change. I had witnessed one murder at close range and been arrested for attempting another; I'd begun to doubt my relationship with Claudia, even suspecting that she might be having an affair with someone else; and I'd gone behind the back of my superior at work to access his personal e-mails to try to determine if he was complicit in a multimillion-pound fraud.

Not to mention becoming the executor and beneficiary of someone that I hardly knew who then turned out to have a twin sister. And then, to top it all, I'd been propositioned for sex by a woman nearly twenty years older than me, and I'd also discovered the real heartbreaking reason for my parents' unhappy marriage.

It was enough to keep even the most tired of men from sleeping. I lay awake in the dark wondering what I should do next and also whether I would still have a job to go to in the morning.

 

 

I
woke late after a restless night, the space in the bed next to me already empty and cold.

I rolled over and looked at the bedside clock. It was gone eight o'clock, and I was usually on the Tube by now.

The phone rang. I decided I didn't want to talk to anyone so I didn't pick it up. However, it stopped ringing when Claudia answered it downstairs.

I turned on the television for the news. Billy Searle's attempted murder had been downgraded from the top story by a government U-turn on schools' policy, but it still warranted a report from Baydon village, and they still managed to mention me by name and show my picture in spite of my release.

At this rate the whole bloody world would believe me guilty.

Claudia came into the room. “It's your mother,” she said.

I picked up the phone. “Hello, Mum,” I said.

“Darling,” she said. “What the hell's going on? You're in all the papers and on the TV.” She sounded very upset, as if she was in tears.

“It's all right, Mum,” I said. “Calm down. I didn't do anything, and the police know it. Otherwise they wouldn't have released me. I promise you, all is fine.”

It took me about five minutes to calm my mother down completely. I knew when I'd succeeded because she told me to get up and have a good breakfast. Eventually I put the phone down and laid my head back on the pillow.

“Aren't you going to the office today?” Claudia asked, coming back into the bedroom carrying two cups of steaming coffee.

It was an innocent enough question, so why did I straightaway wonder if she was checking on my movements in order to plan her own?

“I don't know,” I said, taking one of the cups from her. “What do you think?”

“Things could be worse,” she said. “You could still be in that police station, or in court. Let's look on the bright side.”

“What plans do you have?” I asked.

“Nothing much,” she said. “I might go shopping later.”

“For food?”

“No,” she said. “I need a new dress for the show next week.”

“Oh,” I said. “I'd forgotten about that.”

The thought of attending the opening night of a new West End musical with all the associated press coverage did not now fill me with great joy. Claudia and I had accepted an invitation from Jan Setter to join her at the star-studded event, and at the after-show party. I wondered if, after my clumsy brush-off at Cheltenham, Jan would now be so keen for me to be there, to say nothing of my subsequent arrest.

Look on the bright side, Claudia had said, things could indeed have been worse. I could have still been stuck in that unwelcome cell or I might have been lying in a Liverpool mortuary refrigerator like Herb or in a Swindon hospital intensive care bed like Billy. Things could have been a lot worse.